What could be more exciting than being witness to two bull Elk fighting for the right to mate with the herd.

    We just returned from a wonderful week in Yellowstone National Park.  We only wish we would have  had many more weeks to stick around.  A word of advise is the park does start to shut down mid September.  But what a great time of year to enjoy the nature of what is Yellowstone. 

    What a thrill to see Bull Elk locking horns while fighting for the right of the herd next to a mountain stream, glittering into the warm haze of the morning sun.  Or, perhaps the site of a black bear turning over rocks to gain access to the moths hiding beneath.  Maybe it was the site of over 400 Buffalo grazing in the golden fall colored grass, leading down to the blue of the Yellowstone River below.  Perhaps it was the a family of three Otters gliding down the rapids only to turn around and climb back up the rocks in what appeared to be nothing more than a trip to the local amusement park.  Then again, I think the sight of a Ospry swooping out of the sky to snatch a trout out of the stream, while hordes of fishermen could only stand hip deep in the water staring in envy.

Any single item of those listed above is reason alone to take the trip to Yellowstone.  But, I haven’t even gotten around to taking about the thermal features.

As we contemplate heading toward Yellowstone, I realize looking at some old family photo’s that our visit will be somewhat different than those of some of my ancestors. 

  Well this year we have narrowed the search down to either Estes park, Yellowstone, or Glacier National Park.  Right now Yellowstone is the favorite and in the far lead of places to go see (again).  I think perhaps a couple new picutes will be in order.  Thanks to the digital age, now more changing film every 12, 24, or so pictures.  Being able to take a few hundred between memory card changes is really a great advantage.  So, with a five or six memory cards in hand, I should be able to hold almost everything I want to take a picture of.

     Each day brings us one more day closer to getting away.  Not that we are looking forward to it or anything.

That reminds me, I need to start charging batteries.

   Where to go, what to see.  It’s that time of year again, when we start thinking about taking a little time-off to do a little traveling and see some new sites.  Then again, even seeing some older sites would be welcomed as well.  You may wonder way we choose this time of year, when others make plans at the beginning or middle of the year?  Perhaps it a bit of an age thing on our part.

   No longer having to worry about the hustle and bustle of getting kids ready to head back to school is one reason.  No longer do we have to head out into the stores to find the latest in school supplies.  Of course, today it is a bit more complicated than just getting a box of No.2 pencils, half a dozen spiral note-books, a back-pack and perhaps a few other odds and ends.  Today a parent also has to think about perhaps needing to find the money for a laptop, software, printer, paper, spare ink cartridges and some high speed Internet to make it all work.

   Being empty nesters, we can now focus on where to go after school has started and the weather is still nice.  As we love to venture into national parks, Fall is a great time for those of us, who’s kids are now grown.  With school back into full swing, what we find are no traffic jams, no long lines, and some of our greatest park systems fully accessible.  Would you believe we don’t normaly even need to make reservations ahead of time.  Just pack up and go, what could be better than that?

   So, having a time picked out for sometime in September, all we really need to decide on is where to go.  A couple years ago, we decided on heading out to Estes Park Colorado and ended up in the Grand Canyon!  Another year it was Yellowstone.  Another, it was Arches National park.  So far the only place we have repeaatedly ended up at, on our impromptu get-a-ways, is Estes Park. 

    Though last year we did do a little planning in heading out to Washington.  There we gathered with another pair of family members to do some site seeing in the Olympic National park area.  We did have to purchase plane tickets and a car rental ahead of time on that one.  Additionally getting one nights stay at a hotel near the ocean was left to our traveling family partners, who just happen to live in the region.  The rest of the trip was prodominately impromptu, in that booking a place to stay was at most, a day in advance, or on the day of.  Again, the power of children back in school, really does open up availability.

   So, where to head off to this year?  Right now I am thinking West!

  Well, perhaps a spoon full of paint is a bit of an understatement.  The other weekend we tackled the downstairs bathroom.  For years we have put up with a wallpaper selection we never would have picked for ourselves, but it came with the house, wasn’t totally ugly, and was in overall good shape.  So about once every six months or so, the misses would say “I would really like to get rid of this wallpaper” statement.  So what does it take to get motivated to tackle this project?  How about back to back visitors from out of town within a single month?

    Well, knowing that company was going to be arriving, followed by another weekend of visitors, followed by a third weekend of visitors was all it took to finally convince ourselves that it was time to take on the paper.  So our weekend project started with the removal of the old wallpaper, which went fairly well overall.  But, I have learned that it is hard to remove wallpaper without having to basically skim coat the whole wall area with mud compound to get the wall back to a smooth surface that would be suitable for the application of a fresh coat of primer.  Well, that took care of the first weekend.

    The second weekend we were ready to paint!  OH, that’s right, you do need paint don’t you.  So off to the local hardware store chain to pick out some paint.  Did you ever notice just how many paint colors there are.  Though with my picklickness of color preferences, I could have picked a color and left.  The misses picked out a good selection of various color sampled to bring home and chose from. 

     Turns out within the color selections there was just the right choice for the living room and den area’s!  Turns out we had a gallon in the basement which really was just the right thing for the bathroom.  Well, in the end, the bathroom received a nice new coat of paint, as well as the living room, den and ceilings!  Did I fail to mention that you cannot put a fresh coat of paint on walls without putting a nice new coat of paint on the ceiling.  At least the ceiling paint came in a very nice standard white, which made color selection much easier.

    One last thing.  No bathroom is complete without new towel racks and light-switch covers!

  Well, we have now had our new deck for a couple weeks and had our first scare during the first week.  In an effort to protect our deck from dripping grease from the grill, we purchased a nice protective mat to lay down underneath the grill.

   With what turned out to be luck on our side in the long run, we had a couple days of rain the first week.  Having accumulated large amounts of water, we picked up the new mat to dry it out.  What we found underneath drew heartache and fear at what the cost was going to be.  For everywhere under the map the deck had turn white!  We first thought is was perhaps minerals or reaction from the water being heated in the Sun later in the day.  We tried cleaning the deck to no avail.  The white film remainded regardless of what we did.

   Consulting the TimberTech web site, when drilling down to the XLM information page, what I found at the bottom of the page was information which struck a note of fear.  The information warned of the danger of placing a Rubber based mat ontop of PVC decking due to chemical interation between rubber and PVC.  This has nothing to dowith TimberTech, but rather to do with chemical properties of rubber and PVC, regardless of the product.  The two items just do not play well together.

   So now I knew what caused the problem, but I had no clue if anything could be done about it.  So I did what any red blooded American would do, I wrote the company a “HELP” letter.  Using the company web site, I sent a message with what had happened and a request for if there was anything that could be done to repair the damage, hoping that replacement was not the answer. 

   Replacement would not have made us very happy as we had purchased a really nice big rubber backed mat which ended up whitening over six boards which are about 20 foot long.  Estimated replacement cost would have been around $300!

    The company wrote back the very next day with instructions which were somewhat surprising and which I was really hoping would work.  What the compay said to do was:

            1.) Get a heat gun (I used the wife’s hair dyer)

           2.) Heat up the surface of the deck, taking care to keep moving the heat gun around to prevent overheating, to the point where the white coloring fades and disappears from the surface of the deck.

     Though I wondered how this would work, I figured I had nothing to loose?  So, taking a long extension cord and hairdryer in hand, I proceeded to entertain my neighbor by sitting out on the deck, hairdrying my deck.  At first nothing seemed to happen, but then as the deck surface warmed up, suddenly the white film faded and disappeared before my eyes!  Though the hairdryer was slower than a heat gun it did the trick.

   So for the last week we have once again been able to enjoy the beauty of our new deck.  Now I need to figure out a better way to stop any grease dropping from the grill which seems to happen during slow cooking from the back of the lid.  But, regardless, I have learned a lessen and a little chemistry along the way.

 After a few weeks the old deck is finially gone and has been replaced by the shiny new deck. 

As mentioned earlier, we chose not to go with the composite, but rather to upgrade to the full PVC, as it has a much better history of being a really maintenance free material.  The cost was about another 3 to 4% added onto the cost of the project, but considering the cost savings of not having to buy deck-wash, we will recoup the cost pretty quickly.  Overall, we are very happy with the TimberTec product for now.  Check back in another 10-20 years and we will let you know if we have changed our minds…..

    Some of you may remember last year I had a few days entries regarding the replacement of the back yard fence.  Ok, it was really over a couple weeks.  Oh, you actually read it?  Well is was under two months I think?

   Anyway, with the fun of removing a full back yard worth of wooden fence, this is the year of the “Deck”!  Let me begin with a little regressing back to about 1976 when we bought our very first house up in the rural backwoods of Wisconsin.  At that time we were able to buy a two bedroom ranch with a third room addition and a full basement for the outrageous price of $21,000.   Now keep in mind this was a real house with plumbing, running water (both hot and cold), a full bathroom with tub,  kitchen and a single car attached garage.  And “yes”, it did have a real roof and both a front and back yard.

   So what does this have to do with a deck you may ask?  Well, as you may have guessed, that with just a few extra options, our deck would have cost about the same as our 1970’s house did.  Bottom line, we have just invested an addtional 10% of total value into our 30 something home.  And for this investment we get no new running water, no new plumbing, and no new bathroom or kitchen’s. 

   So why replace the old deck you may ask?  Well, the main reason was safety.  Though we had a few boards here and there that had broken loose on the ends, I have come to realize the there was a little tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down”, playing in the background.  Luckily we decided to replace the deck before the last line of the song was played.  Having four different contractors express, “Your deck is in REALLY BAD condition”, was somewhat of a suprise, as I thought is was just “really poor” in condition!

   Another couple days and the new deck should be in place.  In the next entry, I will take a little time to explain what type of deck we chose and why.  There are many questions you really needed to ask.  Such as, type (wood, composite, PVC), style, colors, and the all important issue of Size.  After all, you don’t just want to have the same thing do you?